by Rachel Kane
We had passed through the gate of a low wall of whitewashed brick, and entered an area that was not well-maintained. The difference between the dark wildness of the overgrowth here, and the pristine cultivation of the resort proper, was astonishing to me, and I found myself looking back through the gate, as though I were leaving a place of safety for something dark and dangerous. Then chided myself for making everything into a metaphor.
“So do you still hate me?” he asked. His voice was somehow quieter on this wooded path.
“I don’t hate you,” I said. Although a week ago, I might’ve answered differently. “But I don’t see what the point is in talking about it.”
“We’re stuck together,” he said, “so we might as well figure it out.”
“I never thought of you as being so introspective.”
“I’m not an idiot, Sergio. I know you’re calling me dumb when you say that.”
I shook my head. “That’s not quite what I mean. You just don’t strike me as the type of person who wants long conversations about feelings.”
“I’m not! I don’t. But you were shitty to me after I helped you with all that ice. Everybody is always telling me what a great guy you are. So there’s something wrong with that picture, isn’t there? Either everybody’s wrong, and you suck, or there’s something going on that I can’t figure out.”
“Same here, people keep telling me that I’m wrong about you. But how can I be? You came after my boyfriend. How am I supposed to take that? I wasn’t misinterpreting that.”
That brought him up short. I was two paces ahead before I realized he’d stopped, and I looked back.
“I was not after your boyfriend,” he said. “Everybody knows Harris is a sociopath. He’s radioactive.”
I shook my head. “I know what I saw, Marcus. I know what I heard.”
“I don’t think you do know, because I have never been interested in Harris. Rich guys who think they’re better than everybody? Who needs that stress? I know plenty of guys who are attracted to that kind of money, and they’ll do anything to get a rich man in the sack, but it just seems pathetic to me.”
But Harris told me about you. I didn’t say that. I felt that sinking sensation I’d gotten several times since the breakup, when I had to question something I’d accepted as truth from Harris.
Could Harris have lied about Marcus?
“Can we just drop it?” I asked.
“I don’t think we can,” he said. “Not if you’re standing there believing I’d go around stealing people’s boyfriends.”
Why was he pursuing this? Was he trying to get me to say he’d done nothing wrong? But how could I say that? He’d thrown himself at Harris. Harris had told me every filthy detail.
Yet Marcus didn’t look like he was lying. He was clearly mad, but he didn’t look like he’d been caught in a lie; it was a look of hurt dignity he was giving me.
“Fine, don’t say anything, Sergio. I’ll do the talking. Because I think there are a couple of things about Harris you don’t know.”
“I don’t care, Marcus. I don’t want to get into this. If you want us to be on better terms so we can survive the rest of the week, that’s cool. But I don’t want to dredge up the past.”
“You’re just like him,” he said, his voice low and level. “Rich, perfect, bothered by nothing in the world as long as you’re getting what you want. You don’t know what it’s like to have to work for a living. You don’t know what it’s like to have to be docile and obedient to a bunch of grabby rich fucks. You don’t know how it feels to have some guy creeping on you and know that if you turn him down, you might lose your job, or worse.”
I needed him to stop. I could see where he was headed, and I couldn’t hear it. I was devastated when I found out Harris had been trying to hit on Owen while we were having trouble. I certainly didn’t need to hear that years before, he’d been hitting on Marcus too.
How many guys had Harris tried to pursue, while he was with me?
How many lies had he told me?
Marcus stepped closer to me. His breathing was heavy. He was so clearly angry, so clearly hurt. “Your ex was all over me, the minute you weren’t in the room. I wanted to push him away. Hell, I wanted to punch him. But I couldn’t. That’s the rule at these gigs. Avoid, deflect, but don’t complain. Don’t raise your voice. Don’t get violent. I told him no, repeatedly, and he wouldn’t listen. Then, later on, you come out all furious at me. Do you know what that fight did? I didn’t just lose that gig, I nearly lost my apartment. Fucking gossips in Oceanside, they had a great time with that story. It was so hard to get another job.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. He was so close to me.
“Are you? Do you understand what it was like to go through that, and then every time we’re in the same room, you glare at me like I’m your worst enemy?”
Why did my hand come up? Did I think I needed to defend myself from him? Did I think he was going to throw a punch? It was reflex. I brought my hand up as though to ward him off...but he was right there, there was no room between us, and my hand rested on his chest. I could feel his heart pounding, feel how his chest swelled with sharp breaths.
It was the contact that did it. Like electricity arcing between us. I could feel it in my fingers, my entire body. I leaned forward and I kissed him.
Such a bad decision. How could I do it? But in my defense, emotions were running so high, and I was confused, I felt lost and strange, and I had seen so much of him the last few days, and...
...and I wanted to. There, I admitted it. I had wanted to, every time I’d seen him, every time I’d gotten a glimpse of his skin. The mere possibility that Harris had lied to me, seemed to take away an obstacle.
But how would Marcus respond? Would he pull away? Would he get angry, give me a shove? He hated me, after all. We were enemies.
In his intake of breath, I heard surprise. A whispered phrase, maybe I don’t, or maybe it was something else, as his lips parted and he met my kiss.
The entire world slowed to stillness around us. I couldn’t hear the birds anymore, or the ocean in the distance. Only the sound of him. I felt his fingers against my shirt, as though considering whether it was safe to grab me, to hold me. Maybe I was overthinking it. I was so scared. The taste of him, the sea-salt on his lips, drove me forward. I pressed my hands on either side of his head. Part of my mind--the part that went to work on my sculpting--was thrilled by the planes of his face, the convexity of muscle in his strong jaw. But honestly the rest of me just wanted him, felt the heat of his skin on my palms, felt the roughness of his stubble, and it set off something primal inside me.
My lips found his throat. The soft skin, the muscle beneath. I kissed. I felt his hands encircle me, go to my back, fingers stroking against my ribs.
“Listen,” he whispered, but his voice trailed off before he could tell me anything.
I sank to my knees in front of him.
“Oh, hey, you don’t...you shouldn’t...”
Of course I shouldn’t. I knew that. This was wrong. It was going to make things more awkward and painful between us. It had more to do with my own frustration over the sculpture, over the breakup, over the way everything had been piling up in my life, than it did with him, or at least I could tell myself that.
Sculpture. His thighs were sculpted, thick with muscle. I thought of statues of gods. Not the classical ones, or the Renaissance gods with their streamlined figures. Something thicker, something wilder, maybe Laocoön but without the agony. There were abrasions on his knees, scratches over his thighs, and I traced them with my fingers. I couldn’t ignore that his cock was growing thick and hard inside his shorts; it was right in front of me, demanding attention.
I didn’t unzip him immediately; my palms rolled his cock inside his shorts, feeling it harden, feeling how little room was left in there for it to grow. He moaned quietly, but when I glanced up he looked away. I brushed the length of his cock with the back of my hand; it was presse
d so hard against the fabric that I could feel every ridge of it through his shorts.
Now my fingers traveled to his zipper, and pulled it down. I reached inside, feeling the heat of his skin against my fingertips. It was work to pull him out; he was just too thick to make it easy. One thing about the ancient sculptors, they had always gone for small, delicate cocks. They found them more civilized, refined. Marcus was a brute, and had the cock to match.
I tasted him. I weighed his cock on my tongue, feeling how it was so heavy it hardly wanted to stand, jutting before him. Earlier he’d used the phrase docile and obedient, and that’s how his cock made me feel inside. What a complicated set of feelings. Yet it seemed so simple; his cock was before me, and I ran my tongue-tip down its length, feeling him shiver through my hands on his hips. I licked him all the way down to his balls. Another part sculptors never got right; they never captured the fullness of them, the way they seemed heavy with potential. He was so salty, like he’d been swimming in the ocean for days.
His hesitations faded away, replaced with a brusque urgency. His fingers were in my hair, pulling me forward. I could have spent hours, I think, licking and nibbling him, exploring his skin with my lips and tongue and teeth. But we were both under stress, and we both knew what he needed right now. I took him between my lips, sucking gently, wetting his head and shaft, careful with that thickness, trying to keep some control before he thrust it into my mouth.
My hand moved from his hip to his shaft, encircling him as I sucked on his head. I touched my tongue against his slit, felt him shiver again.
If anyone had walked by, there would be no question what we were doing. We were out in the open, exposed, and yet seemed to have this tropical forest all to ourselves. Like a secret you speak in a normal voice, when no one is around to hear.
I looked up at him and his eyes were closed. His teeth pressed against his bottom lip. He was pulling my head forward, but gently, with a look on his face poised somewhere between agony and desire. He was as confused as I was about what was happening, but wanted it just as badly.
I felt him hit the back of my throat, and I swallowed, overwhelmed by him. The hand I’d left on his hip could feel him flexing, pushing further, trying to get more into me. I slid my fingers back, felt the muscles of his ass. My tongue worked against the underside of his cock.
It was obvious that he had not been taken care of in some time. So quickly his balls began to tighten, and his thrusts into my mouth became quicker, shorter, more urgent. I heard him moaning again, looked up and saw a totally lost look on his face. He gasped, then with a loud groan that must have carried throughout the woods, he pushed into me hard, and I could feel his cock pulse as he came.
I swallowed as quickly as I could. He had so much pent-up inside him. He shot into my mouth, leaning more of his weight against me, his hips shoving forward. I urged him on, squeezing his shaft with my hand, sucking more lightly now.
After a few moments, he was done, and his cock slid out of my mouth.
I was still on my knees in front of him, his wet cock dangling down. He blinked, looking down at me. Slowly he put himself away, zipping back up.
I realized something had changed between us, but I was too overcome by what had just happened, to understand the change, to grasp its nature. His face was clouded, unreadable. He reached a hand down, and helped me to my feet. A gesture of politeness, or closeness? I could not tell.
I wanted to say something, anything, to break the silence between us. I wanted to understand how he was feeling. Wanted to make sense of what I had just done. But he would not speak.
When I finally worked up the nerve to say something, I had hardly opened my mouth before hearing voices behind us. My eyes wide, I looked around. A work crew had emerged from the gate, carrying tools and packs. A frantic look at Marcus, but he shook his head.
“I don’t think they saw us,” he said.
“Good. I guess I’d better...I mean, do you want to...” I couldn’t find the phrase I wanted. Couldn’t figure out the right thing to say.
Why did he have to look so hurt? Couldn’t he say anything? Something angry? Some joke to relieve the tension?
“See you later,” was all he said, as he walked past me back to the gate. “Good luck on your ice.”
10
Marcus: Into Town
There are times you just need to be alone. When the world has to recede for a while so you can think, puzzle over the things that have happened to you, and try to understand them. And then there are times when you try to be alone, but the world won’t let you.
I was headed into town. I needed to escape all the pampered people--yes, even my friends--everyone who reminded me of Sergio. Just for a little while. I had to get my mind off things. Or wrap my mind around them. Or something.
I’ll tell you what I wanted: I wanted to see how the real people of the island lived. The resort was weird and artificial. It reminded me of the really good restaurants back home, built for comfort, for privacy, for appearance, but also somehow unreal, like you’re floating on a cloud above the normal world below...the normal world, where waiters struggle to pay their rent with the tips left to them. I wanted to see where the waiters of the resort lived, the groundskeepers, the clerks.
Why the sudden interest in social conditions? There was my brain again, trying to force me to think. Shouldn’t you come to some conclusions about what just happened in the woods, before traipsing into town?
No, brain. No, I really shouldn’t.
But I was saved from any more of this by hearing my name. For a split-second I thought Sergio was coming after me, and I cringed a little, but then I realized it was two voices, and when I turned around, I saw Cal and Edgar hailing me.
“I’m glad we found you,” said Edgar, slipping his arm around mine, while Cal did the same on the other side.
“We have some adventures planned, and need someone big and strong to protect us,” said Cal.
“You’re looking awfully spry this morning,” I said. “I’m surprised you’re not still hung over.”
“Morning?” said Edgar. “It’s early afternoon! The day is wasting away!”
“Did you just roll out of your coffin, you old bat?” asked Cal affectionately.
“No, I’ve been up for a while, long enough to go to the cliffs, long enough to--” I stopped. No sense confessing what had just happened. Bad enough to discover I was the target of gossip about Harris...if people started talking about me and Sergio, I would literally swim back to the mainland to get away.
“We have a secret,” whispered Edgar, loud enough to be heard by everyone around.
“Does it have to do with why you’re walking into town?” I asked.
“We were talking to the cutest waiter last night,” said Cal. “This was after you left, while the party was winding down. He said there’s a little bar in town that serves a local ginjinha that will knock you on your ass.”
“You like being knocked on your ass, don’t you?” asked Edgar.
“I don’t even know what a...ninginja?...is.”
“Ginjinha,” said Cal.
“It’s a liqueur they make with sour cherries,” said Edgar.
I gave him a skeptical look. “Sounds syrupy and gross.”
“The waiter tells us they make a special variety here on the island using sour oranges and soursop.”
“So it’s...sour?”
“He says that by the time you recover from the flavor, you’re half in the bag. This variety is home-made, and only available here on Sao Marcos. Hey, did you ever think about how the name of the island is kind of like your name?” Edgar looked at me expectantly.
I shook my head. “Never occurred to me.”
We were passing into town. The early afternoon sun had chased all the shadows away, and everything was bright. By the harbor, the buildings were painted bright candy colors, pinks and blues and oranges that made them seem impossibly happy; further in, there was more whitewashing, and old
er buildings with their proud colonial architecture stood next to modern shops of oddly drab metal and glass. A riotous confusion of old and new, colorful and bland.
If I’d been hoping to totally escape the artificiality of the resort, I realized now that it wasn’t going to be possible; there were plenty of tourists milling around town, gawking and taking pictures, and plenty of businesses set up to take their money. We kept walking, and gradually the chain stores I recognized got fewer and fewer, and we began to see buildings with hand-painted signs, with fewer people staring at their phone-cameras.
“There,” said Cal, pointing at a narrow storefront with brown and gold paint peeling at the edges.
There wasn’t even an in; just a set of stools and a table on the sidewalk. There was a man at the counter, smoking and reading a newspaper; he didn’t glance up until Edgar knocked on the counter.
“Três ginjas, por favor,” said Edgar.
The man nodded and stubbed his cigarette into his ashtray. He pulled out a hacked-up cutting board with long lines gouged into it, stained with juice. Cal and Edgar were looking around at the decor, but my eyes were on the man’s hands. He had a knife whose edge had been sharpened so many times that it was worn away to nothing. With quick, deft movements he slit open an orange, flicking the tip of the blade into the juicy pulp; seeds tumbled out, and then he was squeezing the orange into three glasses. Next he pulled out the fruit I assumed was a soursop, a green, spiky beast. His hand flew, the knife slicing it over and over; the fruit fell open, revealing white flesh with rows of black seeds. Again the seeds were flicked out, again the flesh was pressed into service over the glasses. To every side there were rows of unlabeled glass bottles, each bottle packed with cherries and liquor, and he took down the closest bottle. He filled each glass; they splashed as cherries fell from the bottle into the glass. There was no ceremony about it. We dropped our money into the little dish on the counter and took our glasses to the table.